think tank

A new "Plan B" for Brussels' policies toward Kiev

After the manipulated elections to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada in October 2012, Brussels' relations with Kiev are deadlocked. Ukraine is not fulfilling the signing conditions for the pre-initialed Association Agreement with the EU. Here an eight-point outline of further and alternative actions for the European Union.

ip journal

Interview with Jens Spahn (CDU)

24/11/2014 Germany, European Union

The younger generation of German politicians takes a rather sober view of Europe, as Jens Spahn, a 34 years old rising star in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party, explains in an interview with IP JOURNAL. Spahn does not believe in the idea of an “ever closer Union” or a European federal state. Yet he wants Europe to work towards creating a common army.

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With separatist movements and right-wing populist parties on the rise, it would be easy to conclude that Europe is reverting to small-minded nationalism – and wrong. However, the EU’s vision of a united, transnational Europe could do with new impetus that a more even distribution of decision-making powers would bring.

Britain is one of the United States' most important relationships, but Britain's position within the EU is central to its importance. A UK exit from Europe would weaken the geopolitical position of Britain and change the EU and Europe in ways which could be detrimental to US interests.

Germany is widely perceived to be calling the shots in Europe's sovereign debt crisis management, and maybe in the EU in general. But a state's influence in the union is complex and also contextual. Clearly, though, state power seems to have regained prominence in the European debate. How much power have member states retained, or perhaps even won, in the process of integration – and what does power in the Union look like? Five theses on power in today’s European Union.

A crisis in Franco-German relations has arrived, just in time for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty. This cannot be chalked up to the weakness of the French economy alone; the focus on budgetary questions inside the relationship has also advanced the inequality. Three recommendations to rekindle the romance between these two partners

David Cameron has delivered his long awaited "speech on Europe" and announced that Britain will hold a referendum on EU membership. Despite recent warnings by the US administration against Britain leaving the EU, the British public seems more skeptical than ever. The debate about British relationship with Europe will continue at these new heights until the citizens vote. The clear “in or out” option could help mobilize a coalition of EU supporters, and reforms in Brussels would help the European cause in the UK.

Before decisions on the regulation of the Internet and prevailing universal norms are made on a global level, Europeans must develop a common Internet strategy. Such an EU strategy, however, cannot pit security against freedom or the interests of the state against individual liberties and fundamental rights.

The EU did more than just about anyone else at the recent UN climate summit in Doha to make progress on an array of issues that could slow global warming. But this praise is consciously faint. The meager steps forward in Qatar – like the formulation of a successor treaty to Kyoto – won’t keep global temperatures from rising less than 2 degrees in coming decades or coastal states from being swallowed up by the Pacific.

The EU plans to modernize its public power supply, to create an integrated energy infrastructure, and to take the leap into the era of renewable energy. Is Europe on the right track? And what is Germany’s role? Here are three questions for the Federal Minister for the Environment Peter Altmaier and European Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger.

From Germany’s hard left to the ordoliberal right of the Bundesbank, Goethe offers something for everyone as Germany grapples to understand the euro crisis debate. But is the man himself a model of Germanic thrift or a warning of Greek profligacy? Could his texts be the key to understanding the tortured German euro crisis response?

Clearly, the future still does not look rosy for the Eurozone. But three years into the euro crisis, Angela Merkel, whose global recognition has skyrocketed in the course of the crisis, remains in surprisingly good shape. As many times as worries that the euro rescue will ultimately fail might have kept her up at night over this past year — she doesn’t look it.

British elites have quite suddenly become comfortable with the idea of the UK exiting the European Union in the next few years, and their counterparts on the European mainland seem to have accepted the prospect as well. Continental leaders will not bear Britain ill-will for leaving, at least not if London does it right.

The conservative Orbán government competes with the right-radical Jobbik party for voters, while also trying to toe the line it's drawn on integration of and protection for Hungary's Roma minority. Such an impossible course may prove disastrous on all fronts.

After the manipulated elections to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada in October 2012, Brussels' relations with Kiev are deadlocked. Ukraine is not fulfilling the signing conditions for the pre-initialed Association Agreement with the EU. Here an eight-point outline of further and alternative actions for the European Union.

As traditional security policy is superseded by economic and energy interests, we must begin to discuss the “economization of security policy” – the implications of which go far beyond the current global financial crisis and its effects on the security policy of the West. One voice inside NATO describes what needs to be done to ensure that this commercialization of security will still allow the friendly member countries of NATO and the EU to avoid 21st century conflicts and to continue to act collectively.

A joint EU-US diplomatic visit to Serbia hints that the West sees new Serbian premier Ivica Dacic and his Deputy Aleksandar Vucic as precisely the ones who could persuade their followers, thirteen years after the Kosovo War and four years after Kosovo's secession, to drop 19th-century territorial grievances and move on to a 21st century inside the European Union.

It is not just that the negotiations are highly complex and have many moving parts, or that they condense long-term guesswork about the world in 2020 into a single, big-bang decision. It is that an irrational outcome has essentially been preprogramed.

Londoners are flocking to Berlin these days. During the last two years the Brits calling Berlin or stopping by to chat with Berlin’s political analysts seemed to mostly come from the financial sector. But as eurozone governments have begun transitioning from crisis mode into the messy business of sorting out the longer-term fixes, it’s now Britain's politicians who are showing up in Berlin to discuss Europe.